Retired Naval officer takes her cause to Appalachian Trail

Anne O'Brian took a challenging road during her 20 years of service in the Navy, which she completed in 2005 as a retired Navy chief petty officer, E-7 on fleet reserve, an inactive status before moving onto retired classification in two years.

Anne O'Brian took a challenging road during her 20 years of service in the Navy, which she completed in 2005 as a retired Navy chief petty officer, E-7 on fleet reserve, an inactive status before moving onto retired classification in two years.

She moved from California to Smithfield Village in East Stroudsburg because Pennsylvania has a more amenable tax rate.

And she has made herself at home, landing parts in three original plays at Shawnee Playhouse.

For Worthington Players, O'Brian played Witch Hazel in "Hallowed Wedding" in 2011, and she also played the Narrator in "Whimsical Grimm" in 2011, Maryanne in "Visions of Johanna" in 2012. Anne was also the assistant stage manager/performer for "Laugh Lines" by Kaleidoscope Players in 2012 and the stage manager "The Obituary I'm Dying to Write" in 2013.

She was an E-6 first class petty officer before her final post, a rank uncommon when she enlisted.

"I joined at 19 and am so glad I listened to my mother to stay in," said O'Brian. "It was an honor to serve. I had a very rich and colorful career."

She remembers a four-month stint in 2006 as a contractor stationed at Camp Victory Base in Iraq when a rocket exploded near a cafe where she was eating; only high concrete berms prevented injuries and deaths.

O'Brian wants to share her experiences with her sisters in a 2,200-mile journey starting in April along the Appalachian Trail from Georgia through 14 states to Maine. She got interested while watching a documentary on the trail and learned veterans organizations had taken hikes along the trail. She is preparing with regular hikes from Delaware Water Gap, including the steep trails of Mount Minsi.

"I wanted to honor my sisters in combat and those who died and those disabled and trying to deal with single and double and triple and quadruple amputations," O'Brian said. "I think a lot of women would love to be in my position that their legs hurt but they don't have any."

She's dedicating the first 100 miles to Melissa Rose Barnes, a naval officer killed in the Pentagon when a hijacked plane was flown into it on 9/11.

She started a Facebook page to Barnes four years ago and said nearly 3,000 women in the military have responded, sharing their experiences.

She says she'll blog her feelings and experiences of women hiking each day with her on Facebook under "Band of Sisters: Hike the AT 2014" and post photos every mile of women in the military who died in battle.

Retired women in the military can check her and can enlist for her hike on Facebook. They can hike with sponsorship for their local VA or other military-related causes but must do that on their own.

She says she's also hiking for the rising number of servicewomen who are homeless and for victims of sexual abuse, a prominent problem in the military. She helped a female colleague get through a traumatic date-rape ordeal.

"I had the honor of being a sexual-abuse victims advocate and equal opportunity adviser for my command. Those collateral duties meant a lot," O'Brian said. "I loved taking care of people and looking out for them."

She's hiking for her own ordeal of winding up in military court to address accusations early in her military career that she was gay at a time before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was implemented. Perhaps it was a challenge to her aggressive ascent through the ranks but charges were dropped for insufficient evidence.

"I was more harassed on suspicion of being gay and being interrogated by Naval Investigative Service, which is now Naval Criminal Investigative Service, because of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' which was wonderful because it stopped interrogations and witch hunts and stopped going after gays but went after rapists and people breaking the law," O'Brian said. "It was real tough to me, but I did not let it define me. I stayed and made rank to be the best leader I can."

And she's hiking for women who served who share her ordeal with post-traumatic stress disorder, which figured in her retirement. "I'm dealing with that with a wonderful counselor at the VA (hospital) at Wilkes-Barre," O'Brian said. "A lot of women in the military have pride and won't ask for help.

"I want to advocate for them and honor those who served before me, women who have been in combat since before the Revolutionary War. They've done that, even though they weren't supposed to," she said. "The final glass ceiling is broken about (women in) combat service and recent hearings with military sexual-abuse trauma. It's nothing new. It's an epidemic now."

O'Brian remembers being in the first group of women in the Navy permitted near combat zones. Other military branches allowed that before that time.

"The (Navy) ban was lifted in the mid-1990s and I was able to go on a combatant ship," O'Brian says. "I was not joining Girl Scouts. It was about opportunity, not about exclusion."

She went on the maiden cruise into the western Pacific aboard the newly commissioned Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship named after the first ship for the Continental Army given by the Navy during the Revolutionary War. The ship sailed for six months to Hawaii, Australia, Singapore and Thailand and anchored off East Timor for a community relations event there before heading out to the Persian Gulf and a stop at Bahrain.

She was involved with maneuvers and desert ops (operations) for Desert Storm.

O'Brian's conversation still is filled with abbreviated words and acronyms (initials) from her military experience.

"We were in support just below the hostile

zone and worked with (transporting) the Marines and I used to tell them Marine stands for 'My Ass Rides in Navy Equipment,'" she said. "They'd laugh about that. But I love those guys. When they came on, we took care of them. We were there to help and they knew that."

At the end of her service, O'Brian was chief petty officer in administrative support for Navy Survival School in Warner Springs, Calif., where Navy pilots and ground crew learn how to survive in the desert and evade capture, how to resist and what to do if captured.

She now works as a volunteer at the Tobyhanna Army Depot Retirement Services Office Tuesdays through Thursdays with three other people. She's the only female military retiree in that group.

"It's very moving to meet the World War II veterans," O'Brian said. "I help National Guardsmen reservists approaching the age of retirement."

Now she's preparing for her hike. She spent much of her younger years hiking the trails around Denver, where she lived.

And she'll be motivated by many causes behind her hike just like her grandmother, who was a suffragette, marching for women's right to vote in the early 1900s, and for her mother, who marched for civil rights and women's rights.